> because surely whenever things get tough in a country, the answer is to turn tail and run away to somewhere "better"
The USA PATRIOT Act turned 10 years old in October 2011. If it was going to get better, it would have happened in the first decade.
There are way more things you can't say in the USA than there are things you can't say in Germany. On paper, it certainly appears as if the US has more liberty, sure.
I realized that it was time to go when I walked up the path to the Jefferson Memorial and saw a sign indicating that carrying firearms is prohibited on the grounds.
The liberties that are guaranteed to you in the constitution are no longer real. The fact that Germany enumerates the specific things you can't say and do actually makes it much better here.
EDIT: Found the sign from the TJ memorial. I took a picture of it when I was in DC to visit the NSA's Crypto Museum. http://i.imgur.com/KROsp.jpg
Respectfully: the German government has created official blacklists of religions, promulgating to employers questionnaires intended to help them screen out members of those religions. Yes, the religion involved is Scientology. Yes, I think Scientology is a terrible religion. But a society that can create an official ban on a specific religion has a hard time claiming to be more free than the US.
Scientology is demonstrably not a religion but a harmful scam.
I've lived in both, I can say with authority: One is a lot more free in practice, here. The police concern themselves with criminals, not with bullying. Surveillance is a lot less common. The government isn't wholesale tapping the fibers (or, if they are, they were slick enough to censor the news stories and books about them doing it, too). There aren't laws suspending certain groups' right to trial.
So prior restraint of speech and expression is OK in Germany as long as a credible case can be made that that speech in some way supports an organization conducting a harmful scam.
I agree with you completely about Scientology. And I'd rather have Scientology Centers on as many corners as Christian churches than have a government that colludes with private employers to screen new hires based on their religion.
I do not agree that you and I should have the authority to declare things "not a religion", and note that Germany persecutes Scientologists, not Scientology. That is deeply fucked up.
It's one thing to say that the government should have nothing whatsoever to do with religion, including tax exemption. It's another to say that not only should the government be in the business of picking "legit" religions and designating others as scams or cults, but that it should then be using its power to coordinate a shunning of adherents to those religions.
It's not like the problem is that Germany doesn't respect Scientology. I could give a shit; I don't respect it either. It's that Germany thinks it's the role of the state to tell people what they can and can't believe.
Get back to me after you present a forged travel document in Germany, or show up at the airport with a device that will look to everyone else like a bomb. This ought to be good.
And I'd rather be corralled into a "free speech zone" for expressing a countervailing political opinion than arrested and indicted for it, as you would be in Germany.
The guy who _made the website_ that outputs PDFs of boarding passes was the one who got raided. It wasn't "present[ing] forged travel document[s]".
My point stands. If anything, you just reinforced it by pointing that out.
The people at the RNC _were_ arrested.
And then what happened to them?
The reality is, one nanny state is as good/bad as another. You can point to no objective evidence that Germany is a more enlightened, tolerant, or liberal nation than the US. It's great that you're happy there, but you shouldn't have to indulge in rhetorical gymnastics to affirm your decision to stay... and you can't possibly expect such cherry-picking to convince anyone else.
The USA PATRIOT Act turned 10 years old in October 2011. If it was going to get better, it would have happened in the first decade.
There are way more things you can't say in the USA than there are things you can't say in Germany. On paper, it certainly appears as if the US has more liberty, sure.
I realized that it was time to go when I walked up the path to the Jefferson Memorial and saw a sign indicating that carrying firearms is prohibited on the grounds.
The liberties that are guaranteed to you in the constitution are no longer real. The fact that Germany enumerates the specific things you can't say and do actually makes it much better here.
EDIT: Found the sign from the TJ memorial. I took a picture of it when I was in DC to visit the NSA's Crypto Museum. http://i.imgur.com/KROsp.jpg